Women in the art history field
Women were professionally active in the academic discipline of art history already in the nineteenth century and participated in the important shift early in the century that began involving an "emphatically corporeal visual subject", with Vernon Lee as a notable example. It is argued that in the twentieth century women art historians, by choosing to study women artists, "dramatically" "increased their visibility". In fact, women art historians are one of two groups "who say there have been great women artists" in the first place, according to the authors of a study of the representations of women artists in US textbooks.
Education and employment
In the United States professional, academic employment for women art historians was, by the early 1970s, not commensurate with the number of female PhDs in art history. Between 1960 and 1969, 30.1% of PhDs were awarded to women but those numbers increased significantly during that period: between 1960 and 1965 it was 27%, but between 1966 and 1967 it had gone up to 43.5%. But in 1970-1971, women art historians in art departments in the US made up 23.1% of instructors, 21.6% of assistant professors, 17.5% of associate professors, and only 11.1% of full professors. Comparison with the numbers for the same years for women in the languages, from a study done by the Modern Language Association, showed that "women in C.A.A. professions face rather more severe discrimination than women in M.L.A. fields". Similar tendencies were reported for salary and employment in studio teaching and in museums.The history of women in the profession also suggests that art education itself has benefited from the increased presence of professional women art historians, since women students sometimes found it necessary to "redo" an education in which only a male point of view had been provided given. Paula Harper, "one of the first art historians to bring a feminist perspective to the study of painting and sculpture", and Moira Roth shared the same experience of a "one-sided training", of feeling left out. Discrimination against "women in college and university art departments and art museums" was, in the early 1970s, the immediate cause for the foundation of the Women's Caucus for Art.
In a statistical study of US employment among art faculties published in 1977, Sandra Packard notes that "in art departments women have been decreasing in number since the 1930's", and that the number of women in art faculties at institutes of higher education "decreas from 22% in 1963 to a low of 19.5% in 1974", and cites statistics suggesting that "although women are concentrated at the lower ranks in art faculties, they have more Ph.D. degrees than their male colleagues."
Representation
The Women's Caucus for Art, a caucus for woman art historians, artists, and curators was founded at the 1972 meeting of the College Art Association, but re-established itself as an independent organization in 1974 after the CAA told them they could not use the CAA name anymore. According to Judith Brodsky, the CAA was, at the time, very much a male-dominated organization; she notes, though, in a 1977 article that the Caucus is given space and time at the annual CAA conference and in the CAA's journal, Art Journal. A Lifetime Achievement Award was installed in 1979. The organization's objectives include "providing women with leadership opportunities and professional development" and "expanding networking and exhibition opportunities for women", and to that purpose publishes a newsletter, organizes sessions at conferences, and runs databases for "art and activism". In 2012 the WCA celebrated its 40th anniversary, and published a pamphlet for the annual awards ceremony that also includes a number of historical essays and reflections from the past presidents.Women art historians and feminist art theory
Feminist scholars have argued that the role of women art historians is connected to the study of women by art historians. In 1974, Lise Vogel noted that there were few feminist art historians, and that women art historians in general seemed unwilling to ask "the more radical critiques" a feminist scholar should engage in. In a 1998 essay, Corine Schleif argued that women and feminist scholars need to challenge the "Great Master" canon, and that they need to focus less on "style as evidence of authorship", seen as a traditionally masculine way of viewing the history of art, but rather on style as "one of many sites on the production of meaning". The topic of women scholars in art history is thus intricately connected with what scholars have called feminist art theory; Kerry Freedman, for example, claims that "women art historians often interpret art that is about and by women differently than their male colleagues". However, Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher, in Women artists at the millennium, argue that by the 1980s many "women art history scholars" had begun to think of feminism as irrelevant to the discipline.Notable women art historians
| Name | Nationality | Birth date | Specialization | Profession |
| American | 14th, 15th and 16th century Northern European painting, particularly in Early Netherlandish painting | Kress-Beinecke Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington DC. She is also a curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. | ||
| American | b. 1936 | Dutch Golden Age Painting | Art historian | |
| American | b. 1949 | American art | Artist, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa from 2007 to 2012. | |
| Scottish | 1857–1921 | Experimental aesthetics during the Victorian era | Author, art theorist, art critic | |
| Italian | b. 1963 | Modern Art, design | Curator | |
| English | Victorian art, 19th century art | Art historian | ||
| Tajikistani | 1936–2013 | Medieval arts and painting of Central Asia | Author, researcher | |
| American | b. 1928 | Modern Art, contemporary Art | Writer, professor, art critic | |
| American | 1925–1997 | Domenico Fetti and Caravaggio | Professor | |
| Turkish | b. 1934 | Ottoman art and architecture | Art historian | |
| German | 1897–1975 | Tudor period in England, feminist art | Author | |
| American | 1869–1959 | Medieval art | Professor, a Monuments men, former chair of Department of Art at Wellesley College and director of the Farnsworth Art Museum from 1930–1937. | |
| Belgian | b. 1967 | Medieval iconology | Art historian | |
| Dutch | b. 1946 | Modern Art, Contemporary Art | Cultural theorist, video artist | |
| Italian | 1895–1985 | Italian Baroque, female artists | Writer, art historian, art critic, translator | |
| Italian | 1894–1978 | Etruscan art | Archaeologist, art historian, writer | |
| British | b. 1956 | Material culture, South and Southeast Asian Textiles | Art historian, curator | |
| British | b. 1930 | Catholic art | Art historian, Catholic nun | |
| Swiss | 1926–2004 | Medieval art | Art historian, professor | |
| German | 1909–1989 | Medieval art | Art historian, professor | |
| American | 1864–1945 | Italian Renaissance | Art historian, lecturer | |
| French | b. 1957 | Modern and contemporary | Art historian, professor, curator | |
| German | 1879–1978 | Theatre, sculpture, and clothing of ancient Rome and Greece | Art historian, professor | |
| German | 1892–1964 | Classical tradition | Director of the Warburg Institute | |
| Canadian | b. 1922 | Nineteenth-century French art, Degas | Curator, art historian, and first female director of the National Gallery of Canada | |
| Swiss | 1889–1981 | Indian symbols in art history | Art historian focused on symbols in Indian art, also an artist | |
| Italian | b. 1931 | Italian art history | Author, curator | |
| American | b. 1941 | Impressionism and feminist art history | Art historian, Author and emerita professor at American University | |
| British | Feminist art history including; social history of art, female portraiture, and female nudes. | Author, scholar, feminist art critic | ||
| American | 1896–1986 | Mary Cassatt | Curator, museum director, and art historian at Baltimore Museum of Art | |
| English | b. 1936 | Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Jacques-Louis David | Author, Slade professor of fine art at Cambridge University, her early work focused on art history and later work was fiction novels | |
| British | 1906–2005 | Augustus John, Edgar Degas, James Dickson Innes | Art dealer, art historian | |
| Dutch, American | 1942–2009 | Dutch avant-garde art | Artist, art historian | |
| Italian | 1910–1998 | avant-garde art | Director of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna from 1942 to 1975, art critic | |
| German, American | 1900–2004 | Sinologist, Chinese art and architecture | Art lecturer, art historian | |
| American | Nineteenth and twentieth-century American art, Norman Lewis, Abstract Expressionism | Art historian, curator | ||
| Bolivian | b. 1926 | Andean art history | Art historian | |
| American | b. 1933 | Modern Art, contemporary art | Author, literary critic, art historian | |
| American | b. 1943 | Feminist art critic, contemporary art, modernism, Surrealism, gender and sexuality | Author, Professor Emerita at San Francisco State University | |
| Australian | 1931–2015 | Art historian, first female director of the National Gallery of Australia | ||
| American | b. 1934 | American women artists, Egon Schiele's portraiture | Academic lecturer, writer, a founder of the Women’s Caucus for Art | |
| American | 1913–2008 | Poster Art, graphic design | Art historian and curator at Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s | |
| Australian | Modern art, contemporary art | Curator | ||
| Iranian | b. 1967 | 20th century Iranian photography | Author, historian | |
| Rocio de la Villa | Spanish | b. 1959 | Spanish feminist art, contemporary art | Curator, university professor, president of Spanish Society of Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts, a co-founders of Asociación de Mujeres en las Artes Visuales |
| American | 1943–2008 | Marcel Duchamp | Curator and director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art | |
| American | 18th/19th-century and contemporary Persian art and the Qajar period | Iranian-American independent scholar and curator. | ||
| Belgian | 1915–2014 | Early Netherlandish painting | Heritage official | |
| American | Modern art, Contemporary art | Curator, art historian | ||
| British | 1840–1904 | 18th-century French art | Author, art historian, feminist and trade unionist. | |
| Indian | 1942–2012 | Indian art and architecture history | Author of Indian and Mumbaiart and architecture history books | |
| Joan Evans | British | 1893–1977 | French and English mediaeval art | Art historian |
| American | 1932–1997 | Boston architecture including Henry Hobson Richardson, and Longfellow, Alden and Harlow. | Professor of Architectural History at Tufts University. | |
| Spanish | b. 1964 | Spanish feminist art, contemporary art, and the works of Sonia Delaunay | University professor and researcher, former president of Asociación de Mujeres en las Artes Visuales | |
| American | 1878–1946 | Author of Art Through the Ages, an art history textbook | ||
| American | b. 1940 | Italian Baroque art and feminist art history | Art historian, Author, emerita professor at American University | |
| German | b. 1940 | 20th and 21st-century art | Art historian, Art critic | |
| American | 1930–2012 | Feminist art, Camille Pissarro, contemporary art | Art historian, art critic, art lecturer, author | |
| German, Australian | 1909–2005 | Australian art, the works of Rembrandt | Scholar, academic, curator, author, critic, and lecturer. Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne ; London Adviser of the Felton Bequest. | |
| German | b. 1962 | Die Brücke art movement, German art history | Provenance researcher, author | |
| American | Historiography of Art History | Art historian | ||
| Canadian | Contemporary Asian art, contemporary Asian Canadian art, remix culture | Professor, art historian, curator | ||
| American | b. 1959 | African-American art and artists | Professor, curator, MacArthur Fellow | |
| American | b. 1961 | Dada, Feminist art, Performance art, Body art | Art historian, art theorist, curator, author, university professor, art critic | |
| Ebba Koch | Austrian | Indian art history, Mughal-era, and connecting imperial symbolism. | A professor at the Institute of Art History in Vienna, Austria. | |
| German | Modern Art, Contemporary Art, Museology | Art historian | ||
| American | b. 1941 | 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography | Author, associate editor of Artforum from 1971 to 1974, professor at Columbia University | |
| British | b. 1945 | Feminist film theory, visual culture, cultural memory | Author, researcher, historian | |
| American | Renaissance | Author, scholar, historian with an emphasis on iconographical themes, the meaning of art, as well as social customs. | ||
| American | b. 1957 | Contemporary art | Professor, artist | |
| British, Austrian | 1853–1938 | Modern art | Author, cultural journalist | |
| American | b. 1924 | African-American art | Art historian, art critic, and artist | |
| American | b. 1937 | Contemporary Art | Art critic, curator | |
| British | Computer art,digital art | Art historian | ||
| British | b. 1931 | Italian Baroque sculpture | Art historian | |
| Greek | 1934–1991 | Byzantinologist, Historian of Art | Professor | |
| German | b. 1956 | Healing arts, shamanism | Author | |
| English | b. 1941 | Feminist film theory | feminist film theorist, professor at Birkbeck, University of London | |
| Israeli | Islamic painting: Central Asia, Iran, India, and the Mediterranean | Art historian | ||
| Armenian | 1896–1989 | Armenian and Byzantine studies | Art Historian and Museum Director | |
| American | 1931–2017 | Feminist art history | Art historian | |
| British | Tudor period, queens of England | Author, specializing in archaeology and anthropology. | ||
| German | 1910–1986 | |||
| English, Canadian | b. 1949 | |||
| American | b. 1961 | Victorian Art, Pre-Raphaelites | Art historian, Professor, curator, author | |
| American | 1944–2006 | Feminist art movement in the United States | Art historian, art critic, and founder of the Los Angeles Woman's Building | |
| German, American | 1890–1967 | Modern art | Co-founder and first director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, abstract artist, art collector | |
| American | b. 1938 | History of comics | Artist and writer | |
| American | b. 1938 | |||
| Polish | b. 1944 | |||
| Danish | b. 1944 | Danish art history | Independent scholar, art critic, and author | |
| German | 1766–1838 | Artist, author | ||
| American | b. 1962 | Modern Iraqi art | Art historian | |
| American | b. 1947 | Film theorist, art historian | ||
| Brazilian | Producer and writer | |||
| American | b. 1941 | Developments in imaging arts, optical sciences, and performance technologies | Art historian, researcher | |
| American | 1903–2000 | American roadside attractions, American folk art, Outsider artists | Art historian, photographer, curator, art dealer | |
| German, American | 1889–1975 | Artist, art historian | ||
| American | b. 1947 | Art historian, curator | ||
| Irish | 1832–1900 | Antiquarian | ||
| American | 1929–2016 | Medieval and Spanish art | Art historian, professor, author | |
| American | 20th and 21st-century Central and West African art history | Professor of African Art at Columbia University | ||
| British | b. 1948 | Indian art history | Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art since 2004. | |
| American | 1884–1967 | Ancient classical painting | Archeologist, professor | |
| American | b. 1959 | Curator | American painting and sculpture | |
| American | 1900–2001 | |||
| Austrian, American | 1883–1958 | Contemporary Viennese Art, Renaissance art, the Venetian school | Academic lecturer | |
| Australian | 1917–2009 | Historian | ||
| English | 1897–1985 | |||
| American | 1940–2006 | |||
| American | 1927–1991 | American women artists, works by Luis Egidio Meléndez | Academic lecturer, writer | |
| French | 1898–1980 | Commission for the Recovery of Works of Art | ||
| American | 1928–2001 | Ancient Greek art, Mycenaean culture | Classical scholar and archaeologist, professor at Harvard University. | |
| Polish | 1908–1980 | |||
| American | b. 1949 | Modern and contemporary art | Art historian, Professor emerita | |
| Austrian | 1921–1980 | Architecture, historicism | Academic lecturer | |
| American | b. 1959 | Renaissance and early modern | Art historian, professor | |
| American | 1862–1937 | Architecture | Writer | |
| English | 1897–1975 | English art history | Academic lecturer | |
| American | 1936–1996 | African art | Curator, museum director | |
| English | Pierre Klossowski, Henri Matisse, Post-structuralism | Professor at Courtauld Institute, author | ||
| German | 1885–1989 | Jewish art history | architect, art historian | |
| German, American | 1902–1995 | Neo-Palladian Architecture, Italian Renaissance, Baroque | Writer, Interior Design | |
| British | b. 1956 | Portraiture, Netherlandish Art | ||
| British | 1901–1988 | Thomas Gainsborough scholar | Museum director, curator | |
| English | 1899–1981 | Renaissance | ||
| Polish | 1890–1961 | Polish prosaist | ||
| Austrian | 1903–1999 | Coptic Art | Art historian, professor at University of Alexandria and Carleton University Ottawa. | |
| French-Beninese | b. 1982 | Contemporary art in Africa | President of Fondation Zinsou and in 2014 she found the Museum of Contemporary Art in Benin, the first museum of art in the country. | |
| American | b. 1969 | Early modern European, contemporary | Art historian, professor |